Chapter Fifteen.
Donn Piatt’s Reminiscence. Press Notices.
In this chapter are given a reminiscence by Donn Piatt of Mayne Reid, and a few extracts from the numerous obituary notices which appeared in the press. Donn Piatt writes:
“Mayne Reid wrote his first romance at my house, in this valley, where he spent a winter. He had come out of the Mexican war decorated with an ugly wound, and covered with glory as the bravest of the brave, in our little army under Scott.
“When not making love to the fair girls of the Mac-o-chee, or dashing over the country on my mare, he was writing a romance, (‘The Rifle Rangers’) with the scene in Mexico and on our Mexican border.
“He would read chapters to us of an evening (he was a fine reader), and if the commendation did not come up to his self-appreciation he would go to bed in a huff, and not touching pen to paper for days would make my mare suffer in his wild rides. I found that to save bay Jenny I must praise his work, and he came to regard me in time as Byron did Gifford. When told that ugly critic had pronounced ‘me lord’ the greatest of living poets, he said that he was ‘a damned discriminating fellow.’
“That romance proved a great success. Again, like Byron, he put his well-worn gown, one morning, about one wakened to fame and fortune.
“The first remittance took the restless soldier of fortune from us, never to return. He would not have been content to remain as long as he did, but for the fact that he was desperately in love with a fair inmate of our house. But in her big blue eyes the gallant Irishman did not find favour, and he at last gave up the pursuit.
“From the station where he awaited his train he wrote us two letters. One of these I never saw. The other contained the following lines, which, without possessing any remarkable poetic merit, gracefully put on record his kind feelings on parting from the house he had made his home for nearly a year.”
Mac-o-Chee Adieu.
Fade from my sight the valley sweet,
The brown, old, mossy mill,
The willows, where the wild birds keep
Song watch beside the rill;
The cottage, with its rustic porch,
Where the latest flower blooms,
And autumn, with her flaming torch,
The dying year illumes.
Within mine ears the sad farewell
In music lingers yet,
And casts upon my soul a spell
That bids it not forget;
Forget, dear friends, I never may,
While yet there lives a strain,
A flower, a thought, a favoured lay
To call you back again.
When evening comes you fondly meet
About the firelit hearth,
And hours fly by on winged feet,
In music and in mirth;
Ah! give a thought to one whose fate
On thorny pathway lies,
Who lingered fondly near the gate
That hid his paradise.
I hear, along the ringing rails,
My fate, that comes apace,
A moment more and strife prevails,
Where once were peace and rest;
Unrest begins, my furlough ends,
The world breaks on my view,
Ah! peaceful scene; ah! loving friends,
A sad and last adieu.
“Between that parting and our next encounter some twenty years intervened. Mayne Reid had made his fame and fortune, throwing the last away upon a Mexican ranch in England, and I yet floating about on spars had just begun to use my pen as a means of support. He was grey, stout and rosy, living with his handsome little wife in rooms in Union Square. I told him that the old homestead upon the Mac-o-chee had fallen into decay, and of the little family circle he so fondly remembered I alone remained.
“That made him so sad that I proposed a bottle of wine to alleviate our sorrow, and he led the way to a subterranean excavation in Broadway, where we had not only the bottle, but a dinner and several bottles.”
The following are short extracts from some public notices of his life:
In The Times, October 24th, 1883—“Every schoolboy, and every one who has ever been a schoolboy, will learn with sorrow of the death of Captain Mayne Reid. Who has forgotten those glorious rides across the Mexican prairies, when we galloped, mounted upon a mustang—a horse would have been too flat and unromantic—on the war trail, and surprised our enemy. The very titles of the books are enough to stir the blood. What a vista they open out of wild adventure, of mystery, of savage heroism!”
In The Standard—“It is an odd incident in the life of Captain Mayne Reid, that its active part ended suddenly, just when he might be supposed to think that it was seriously beginning. In 1849 he came to London, and began to pour forth that wonderful stream of romance, which never quite failed through thirty-four years, to the day of his death. Captain Mayne Reid wrote for men and women, as well as boys; but there was not, we believe, a word in his books which a schoolboy could not read aloud to his mother and sisters.”
In The Daily News—“An active man of adventurous temperament, he imparted his own animal spirits and his passion for the marvellous into the products of his busy brain. He was born with a zest for travel, which he contrived to indulge at a very early age. He explored American backwoods, hunted with Indians up the Red River, and roamed the boundless prairie on his own account. On behalf of the United States, in whose army he received a commission, he fought against Mexico. When his sword was in its sheath, and his fingers held the pen, he wrote with vigour and impetuosity as if under fire. Captain Mayne Reid gave by his books a great deal of innocent pleasure, and they could always be admitted without scruple or inquiry into the best-regulated families.”
And in The Spectator, October 27th, 1883—“As our judgment on Mayne Reid’s novels is not that of our contemporaries, we are disinclined to allow his death to pass without a word of criticism. As an individual we knew nothing about him, except that in our judgment he missed his career, and would have made a first-class agent of the Geographical Society, to explore dangerous or excessively difficult regions, like Thibet, the Atlas Range, or the unknown hills and locked-up villages of Eastern Peru. He was a man of exceptional daring, having a positive liking for danger; he had the typographical eyes which should belong to a general; and he had a faculty of description, which he watered down for his novels till it was hardly apparent. During the only interview which this writer ever had with him, accident induced his interlocutor to ask about the Pintos—the particoloured race sprung from native Mexicans and the cross breed between Indians and Negroes—who are stated to exist in the State of Mexico. The writer disbelieved in them, and expressed his belief, but Captain Mayne Reid, who declared he had seen specimens of the race, held him quite fascinated for half-an-hour by a description which, if imaginary, was a triumph of art, but which left on the hearer’s mind an impression of absolute truth.”